When people say this, they just seem to mean European countries have more universal healthcare than the US does. But /keeping/ your healthcare program after it's already been invented is conservative!

European parties are definitely not to the left of the Democrats on immigration or minority rights.

Nah, there's far more to it than that. Workers' rights, consumer rights, privacy laws, and strong regulations around corporations for a start.

The issue with new rights vs preserving existing rights also applies here I think.

Lina Khan's FTC is left of most of these though. They're trying to break up Google right now!

No they wouldn't.

Mass immigration, paying for transgender surgeries for prisoners, affirmitive action, all left policies in EU. Tons more too.

All of which are "social liberal".

These, and a lot of other things are pretty much randomly left/right. For example in the UK it was the traditionally right wing party that legalised same sex marriage. In the 70s the left (then actual socialists!) opposed EEC membership, by the time we left the EU it was the right who wanted to leave.

What the US never had (and which is pretty much dead in the UK now) is a real economically left wing party. In the UK this has lead to a lot of people (including myself) feeling that there is not much difference between the big parties. This helps for extreme parties in the UK. In the US which is more of a two party system perhaps it helps feed the rise of extreme movements within the existing parties?

Social liberal policies are left.

And yeah, politics are a lot more complex than left/right so you will often see a party you'd normally consider left/right enact a policy you'd see from the other side.

> Social liberal policies are left.

How so? Only because we say so now. TO some extent I think we identify issues as social liberal because they are what the left in the US favours.

There are plenty of examples of let wing parties and governments being quite the opposite - take a look at gay rights in communist China or the toing and froing in the Soviet Union. The same with many traditional socialists around the world.

Those are not left policies. Just liberal. We have both left and right parties that have similar policies. We also have left and right parties that area against it.

Left are liberal policies, right are conservative policies.

you think conservatives in europe want tax hikes, mass immigration and abortion at 9 months?

Most dems, and certainly Harris, want nothing to do with abortion at 9 months. This is adding nothing to this discussion.

If Dems don't want it why have they passed a bill that allows exactly that? My post is already censored btw.

I think they do want those strange made-up strawman policies.

Considering that our far right government in italy hiked taxes and approved the biggest number of visa for slave workers, yeah they do except for women's rights

Nobody wants abortion at 9 months.

Women who are otherwise going to die because of a medical condition might want to have an abortion at 9 months (for example). The idea of being "for abortion at 9 months" just means allowing those women to live (instead of having to have their babies whether or not it kills them).

Very much depends on the issue being discussed. Economically? Perhaps. Socially? Absolutely not. The US is far out on its own branch when it comes to things like LGBTQ issues, racial and other identity issues, immigration, etc. I’m not sure these played as much of a role as the economy in terms of this election, but they are absolutely next in line in terms of the issues looming large in voters’ minds.

Americans want a better future than what seems in the cards for the EU

Then they've chosen a poor route toward it.